Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to managing information about a process, and more particularly to managing processes executed on an image processing device.
Description of the Related Art
Image processing devices are routinely deployed for both personal and commercial uses. Image processing devices may provide functionality for making photocopies, printing a document, scanning a document and generating an electronic document representing the scanned document, transmitting data over a network, accessing a database on a remote server, or other tasks. These devices are generally provided and shared among many different users in an office environment. In some instances, the image processing devices may require a user to be authenticated via unique access credential associated in order to make use of one or more resources (e.g. applications or other functionality) available on the image processing device. Moreover, certain destination systems that are accessible by the image processing device (or an application executing thereon) may also require the user to be authenticated.
Conventionally, in order for a user to be authenticated, the user may provide a access credentials. The authentication may be based on a username and password, a smart card, a personal identification number (PIN), biometric information, other information associated with the user, or a combination of two or more of these. Once logged in to the image processing device, the user has access to one or more resources of the image processing device.
For example, a multifunction peripheral, copier, scanner, printer, or other image processing device, may require users to be authenticated before granting them access to one or more resources of the image processing device. Additionally or alternatively, an application executing on the image processing device may require users to be authenticated before granting them access to one or more resources of the application or image processing device. Once logged in to the image processing device and/or application, the user may be permitted to utilize various functions, features, and user interfaces in order to perform particular tasks. By way of example, the image processing device and/or application executing on the image processing device may provide functionality for making photocopies, printing a document, scanning a document and generating an electronic document representing the scanned document, transmitting data over a network, accessing a database on a remote server, or other task. When logged out of the image processing device and/or application, the user may have no access or limited access to functionality and information of the image processing device and/or application.
A drawback associated with conventional login processes described above occurs in an environment when the image processing device is being shared amongst a plurality of users. Typically, once the user is authenticated with the image processing device and executes one or more tasks on the image processing device, the image processing device is unusable by any other users who share the image processing device. Thus, for a task involving a large scan job followed by a send job where the scanned data is communicated to a destination system, it would be desirable to allow other users to make use of image processing device resources prior to the completion of one or more previously executed tasks. However, a drawback exists when one or more previous executed tasks requires the proper authentication credentials for completion. A system and method according to invention principles remedies the drawbacks described above.